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Thursday, July 25, 2013

Overheard in the Kitchen...

My cat likes olive oil.

See, sometimes while Bobbi was cooking breakfast, she used to give the cat a bit of bacon grease. Pretty soon, Rannie decided that any stove-centric activity must produce yummy grease, not grasping the cruel fact that there was no such thing as oatmeal grease or soup grease.

So one morning when Bobbi was cooking oatmeal, she put a little olive oil in a saucer for the cat. Apparently ever since that fateful morning my cat couldn't care less about bacon grease; she wants her olive oil in the morning and will paw at Bobbi's leg or even nip her on the calf while she's cooking breakfast until she gets her olive oil.

Now I discover that it can't be just any ol' kind of olive oil, either...

INT. ROSEHOLME COTTAGE KITCHEN - EVENING

RX: "This isn't extra virgin olive oil."

Me: "Wait, what? It's Bertoli!"

RX: "But it's not extra virgin."

Me: "I thought my cat liked..."

RX: "She likes the extra virgin."

Me: "I'll... We can..."

RX: "I prefer the extra virgin, too."

Me: "So you're saying that the regular Bertoli isn't good enough to give to the cat?"

RX: "Oh, I guess she'll eat it. Reluctantly. But she'll dig in to the extra virgin. What can I say? Your cat's an olive oil snob."

Please to be giving me olive oil? And not the cheap stuff you feed the peasants, either, monkey.

Olive Oil is one of those things that often isn't as advertised on the bottle, just as much of what passes for "beef" in the UK had a tendency to whinny when in the pre-slaughter state. And don't even get me started on all the frauds possible with the white flesh called "fish."

We started adding chopped garlic to the dogs' food to help repel fleas ticks and vampires. Now they will ignore their bowl of kibble unless there is at least a tablespoon of garlic mixed in. It works great for fleas and ticks, but when mixed with coprophagia it is also a potent human repellant

One of our cats has a built-in radar that is tuned to the frequency of shrimp. If there is a shrimp out of the refrigerator, she will sense it and be there in seconds, even from a deep sleep.

Once, I had some leftovers from the chinese takeout. One piece of it was an ebi sushi. I left the table for a moment to attend to something our son was doing, and when I returned there was a ball of sushi rice and two little tiny pieces of shimp tail on the plate....

I can't seem to tell the difference between virgin olive oil and dockside-tart olive oil. This is probably just as well, because I buy my olive oil in 3-litre jerry cans.

In Skokie, a suburb of Chicago, there is a grocery store catering to the kajillion ethnicities in the Metro area. It has olive oil in jerry cans cheaper than I can get store-brand vegetable oil here in My Fair City. So what if it's labeled in Hellenic or Arabic?

Every opportunity we get to work in that area my colleague and I drive there to stock up not only on this but also on cheeses which are cheaper per ounce than here in Indiana, as well as the latest number of the free Russian-language gazetas they have by the entrance.

It and Uncle Fun on Belmont are the only things worth going to Illinois for.

I read a magazine article on olive oil a while back, and it pointed out that it goes bad fairly quickly. Oxidation, IIRC. Small bottles should be use within a couple weeks, once opened. Can't recall the shelf life.

I'm wondering if the larger container would degrade slower.

One thing that was pointed out is you should be looking at the bottled date, not the expiration date, since that doesn't have as much bearing on quality.

We had a cat that went nuts for olives. One time my husband was eating olives standing up and I watched the cat literally try to climb up his leg to get to the olives. We decided it would be much better for our own health if we offered him at least one any time they were being eaten.

What Bob said. I mostly use olive oil for pan frying, so I buy the 1 gallon can for $19.99 at Kroger's. It's labeled extra-virgin olive oil. Me and Kroger's have a mutual understanding where we both pretend that's true.

Will, about as fast as anyone who isn't deep-frying all the time. I can go through 3 liters in a few months. I'm no foodie - never had it go bad. Store it in a cool dry place in the jerry can and it ought to last a year or so.